Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments To skip a grade or not..

Hi all,

We have recently moved to CO, and our son is in 3rd grade (public school). We lived in Europe previously and our son skipped 1st grade there. The public school in CO put him back to his normal grade because of his age. I told them that was fine as long as he was assessed and taught at the appropriate level (my silly notion). He wasn't.

Now that he is tucked in nicely with his peer group, but suffering academically, they suggest he skip 4th grade. My son is adamantly opposed. He has moved around too much. I suggested (again) that the school teach above grade level, but apparently they don't. I suggested he take some subjects in the next grade, and they don't block their instruction times.

Any suggestions? Since he was having bouts of extra noise in the class in his boring subjects, I took him to a psychologist (gifted). She suggested skipping 4th because he was under served.

I am caught between a rock and a hard place. Any suggestions are appreciated.

We live in Colorado, too. I don't know where in the state you are, but where I live if the schools are suggesting a skip, it is probably more than necessary. My eldest did a few different things before skipping 5th (homeschool, charter school, GT pull outs, subject acceleration). In terms of in school differentiation, the grade skip has worked the best.

On the other hand, you may have to do a sales job on your ds b/c most schools will use the Iowa Acceleration Scale when approving a skip and a child be opposed is an immediate "no" on the IAS. Could you try to give him opportunities to make friends with the kids in the next grade up though extracurriculars or subject acceleration?

Hi KatBarber -welcome!

At this point, it is my opinion that you are still the parent, and need to make decisions for your child, even if he doesn't like it. If you feel that it would be more appropriate to skip a grade, then maybe you can do some other things to help ease things. For example, promise that you will facilitate play dates etc. with kids from the former class, and start doing that over the summer. Also, is there any chance that the school would let your DS go down a grade for any classes, like gym or some other specials? There might be at least one class that is at the same time.

Of course, there are other things to think about when determining whether a skip is the right thing to do. I recommend filling out the Iowa Acceleration Scales.

My DS7 is a bit younger, but he skipped 1st and then we transferred him to a different school mid-year. He was reluctant to transfer, but it has all worked out fine. We still see his friends from kindergarten, and any friends he's wanted to see from the first half of this year. We just told him we needed to find the best school fit for him, and although we showed compassion for his concerns, we put it in terms of this being a decision his parents needed to make.

Good luck!

I think that it is probably not that they 'won't' meet his needs in the agepeer classroom, but that it isn't possible. Even if you had a super teacher (and who can rely on that year after year?) who could totally tailor the curriculum to your child year after year, what about having a group of learning peers? The best teacher in the world can't create that if the child is unusally more beyond the agemates.

Do you have IQ and achievement test results to give you an idea of LOG (Level of giftedness) - that might help you weigh and balance.

If I'm reading the quote above correctly, you son is acting up and making noise while he is bored, yes? If this is true, then you can not leave the decision in his hands. His lips say 'No, No' but his eyes say 'Yes, Yes.'

Some helpful tips to twist the arms of reluctant kids who truely are high LOG, and just don't have a choice:
1) Blame the principle "Honey it's not up to me"
2) Blame reality "Honey, I'm sorry but that's just the way it is."
3) Guided imagry of all the homework that will be missed by skipping the grade.
4) Set up a few playdates with likely boys in the recieving class
5) Sit and observe the recieving teacher - it will help you be enthusiastic.

Best Wishes,
Grinity

This one is always a winner in our house.

LOL.

That one's bound to be a winner any way you examine it.

Good one! Not sure why, but this reminds me of a conversation with my DS when he was in kindy complaining about school being boring, before the grade skip. He complained daily about going to school. I finally said to him that we would do our best to get him through school as quickly as possible. Fast forward to the second month after the grade skip to second, when we were still worried about whether it was a good idea. I asked DS what he thought of the skip, and he said it was great, and he thought he'd probably skip 3rd too....

I would find out WHY, in detail he is opposed to the skip. We skipped 3rd last year and went into 4th and it's been great! My child wasn't opposed though, and as a pp mentioned, if the child is against it, almost all bets are off as far as the IAS goes.

I would sit down and talk about the cons of it and push the pros and see if you can't shed some light on those fears (whether he denies he has them or not, they are probably there.)

I agree with bh - If you can figure out why your DS is so against the skip, you can better prepare some arguments to convince him why it's a good idea, or you can find things to help make the downsides more palatable. Of course this is unknown territory for your DS, and he's going to be scared of some things. Talking it all out may help change his mind.

I still wonder why the IAS says all bets are off when the child is against the skip. I would give more value to this with an older child, but in early elementary, I would lean toward the parent and school staff knowing what's best.

I thought of another factor that helped convince our son that skipping wouldn't be so bad. He didn't want to lose his friends and doesn't like being in a situation with a bunch of strangers. As it turned out, our school had 10 classes of Kindergartners moving to 1st, so it was likely he'd be in a room full of strangers anyway. And we made lots of playdates with his friends (and still do).

Here in FL they mix up the classes every single year. There are 7 K classes and 18 kids in each class...there are 7 first grade classes. Chances are you won't be in class the following year with more that 2 or 3 kids from your class the year before (and the kids withdraw and move around a lot, very mobile area).

There are three exceptions...if you are in the class that has the ESOL support teacher team teaching and you need it again the next year you might have classmates from year to year. If you are in the class with ESE support teacher team teaching and you don't get dismissed you probably will have classmates year to year. And if you are assigned to the teacher certified as a gifted instructor for that grade, you probably get the same classmates. But just an average kid gets mixed up year to year.

Because - hold on to your hats - the 'end user' child of the IAS is most likely not a PG kid. The target audience of IAS is Optimally and Highly Gifted kids.

And so - that is why we families of PGlets break 3 rules of IAS all the time -
1) No skipping into a grade that contains a sibling.
2) No skipping a kid who doesn't want a skip.
3) No skipping a bridge year (although I wouldn't skip a bridge year for some 2E PGlets - having done it myself!)

Or as a friend of mine says,humerously: We would never skip a PG child who doesn't want an offered skip after we've twisted their arm 360 degrees and offered them their very own pony!

It is true for example, that my son didn't want to skip while he was with his friends at the public school (which didn't offer one anyway) but after DS moved to the private school and didn't know the kids anyway, he was happy to skip. My bottom line: Do ask about the specifics of why a child doesn't want to skip, because often those can be adressed, BUT, it's still up to the parent to go with their best guess about how to get the most reasonable fit. Gradeskipping is too large a topic not to expect the kid to have some mixed feelings, unless you are lucky enough to have be at a school where subject accelerations and full skips are 'just normal.' Sigh - wouldn't that be wonderful.

There was this one school were first thing every morning, the kids all filed out into the hallway to get to their Math class, all the kids, aged 5 to 13. Sigh.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

Ah, well that makes sense. I think it's easy to forget that the IAS is not written just for PG kids to take advantage of, because unfortunately, usually the only way you're going to convince a school to skip your child is if he's so way out there that they have to agree that regular grade progression isn't appropriate.

Really? I guess I should have been able to figure that out on my own, since the IQ cutoff they use is so low (1 SD out, or 115, IIRC) that I felt confident ignoring IQ considerations entirely. I'm not really a good rule-follower, though, unless following the rules suits my own purposes.


Amen - and I personally felt comfortable using the most-skip-favorable feeling as the one that counted.

FWIW, here's the calendar of DD's skip of 2nd (which was not a mid-year skip, since our district doesn't like those):

May 2010: I hate school, because it is so boring. I do not care if I'd be leaving all my friends behind. I will do anything to be allowed to skip to third.
early July 2010: Maybe I will just go to 3rd for all the subjects, but be with the 2nd graders for lunch and specials. (We as parents knew this wasn't going to happen, and kept our mouths shut).
late July 2010: I don't want to skip at all, and would rather be with my friends, even if the work is too boring. (We made her test for the skip anyhow.)
August 2010: I am the slowest kid in the entire 3rd grade. I have no friends, and everyone knows how to do the stuff we're doing except for me. Please let me go back to 2nd grade.
October 2010: I am really good at the work we're doing, but I still wish I had more friends.
March 2011: Skipping 2nd grade was a really good decision, and I'm glad I did it.
April 2011: All the review we're doing is really boring. I wish I could learn all of 4th grade over the summer, and be in 5th next year. Or go to a different school that only has girls, because boys are annoying. Or be homeschooled.

(Note the vanishingly-small "sweet spot" where both academic and social comfort overlapped! And the ratio of complaints to satisfaction!)

I have to heartily agree with you here - and thanks so much for posting your chronology - very instructive for PGlets.

Remember that Perfectionism - particularly the Outer-directed-perfectionism - is alive and well in most of us for the majority of our years on earth. Liberal helping of salt grains needed.

I think that what helped us the most over the years, was to have a family 'motto' that was short and to the point to refer back to. Ours was something like: "All members of this family are expected to put themselves in situation where they face challenges and have to work to overcome those challenges."

Having a guidepost was really helpful when DS was changing schools and fine tuning the balance. He 'got it' that I didn't really care which classroom he sat in, as long as he was able to create challenges during or after school to engage with. Since his needs were so extreme, and his internal motivation and creativity isn't the strongest, there were many years when this meant he needed gradeskips so he could be in the classrooms where the teacher created the challenges. I know other kids who are better at generating alternatives and great at 'self-differentiating' no matter what classroom they are in. As long as we kept the goal in mind, then it didn't become a power struggle about 'how to accomplish the goal.'

Make sense?
Grinity

Yup - one of life ironies of life where I live is that the only kids who schools feel comfortable skipping are the ones that need so much more that a single skip!

((animation of head banding against the wall!!!))

Then I have to remember that there are other places where schools are have it all in place and propose the accomidations to the parents!

Really -- it's that low?! I know that there's a new version out since dd12's school used it for her, but I thought that the version they used required a minimum IQ of 130 (2 SDs) for consideration unless the child had just missed the K cut-off and was one of the very oldest in grade. In the later situation, I thought that 115 was allowable. Did they change that with the newer version? I know that the newer version now allows usage of a composite CogAT score rather than IQ as well, which I have mixed feelings about.

Cricket, you are correct. That is what my book says too (we just used it last year.) The IAS has no specific cutoff, since it's not a test, it uses a base line score for discussion. The 115 came in when considering a child for early entrance to K, who needs to be 5 by Sept. but this child is shy of that. The normally considered IQ scores can be looked at as low as 115 in cases such as this. The good thing with the IAS is that even if the IQ score is slightly lower than most GT program cutoffs (though if you are looking at a skip, it's usually NOT lower) but there are so many other factors that are taken into account in the IAS that you get a better picture of a child who is/isn't ready.

The (likely very old) version I have has, in the "dealbreaker" section (along with "sibling in the same grade" and "doesn't want the skip") "The student�s ability (measured by IQ) is less than one standard deviation above the mean."

They do strongly suggest that if the child is not in favor of a skip (in new version) that it shouldn't be pursued. I, like others have suggested, feel that when children are very young, it is often the parent that has to do the "I know what's best" argument for my child and not rely on the perception of a very young child. Also, I can't stress enough, that just talking to the child about the advantages of the skip are more likely to lead to a child who is more accepting of the idea.

I just need to step back and admire that quote for a minute. I'm putting it in my treasure trove of quotes to use with my girls.

That's an interesting story, and amazing how it all worked out. I have a sense that you were very careful in how you spoke with your ds about the skip. I'd be curious how that conversation went. It looks like my dcs will be at the same level in math for the next several years and they are 3 years apart. Trying to find some ways to talk about this. So far it's not been a great thing.

That's what I recall on the form as well, but the book that was supposed to be used in conjunction with the form gave more info about filling it out and said, as least at the time, that the +1SD should only be considered if the child was much older for grade having just missed the K cut off or was in that same spot and looking to start K early.

I called Belin-blank regarding using the IAS with a PG child and multiple skips. They told me that it is not designed to give results for that situation. It is only designed for single grade skips and not radical acceleration of any kind.

Ohhh... interesting. Don't most educators call a "single skip" radical acceleration to start with??


(Really not understanding that.)


ROFL!!! LOVE IT.

Yeah, I think that something that is easy to forget is that, sure, you need some level of cooperation from the child... er-- or at least "compliance" if nothing else--

but children being, you know-- children?

They aren't always going to want what is best for them, or be able to see past the emotional landscape of being their chronological age.

Would most parents ask a seventeen-year-old about college plans? Absolutely-- and probably defer to them in most cases.

Is that appropriate PARENTING at age nine? Probably not.

KWIM?

Thank you for all the feedback. It is great to find other who have faced a similar dilemma.

We have made several decisions about my sons education without giving him a choice.. In this case he feels the fifth grade kids will pick on him. He has seen that sort of bullying at school before. It could be he is overreacting since he is pretty sensitive (especially about being different).

The principal told me again today that she will not "create a special curriculum" for him is he stays in 4th grade. He can stay in 4th or move to 5th. She advised against letting him work ahead in math if he stays in 4th. Pretty discouraging. I (nicely) let her know that he will work ahead to his heart's content.

My preference is to have him accelerated by subject but stay in 4th. My next stop is to have another discussion with the district to make sure I understand all the options. It seems unbelievable that he is the only kid in this district in this situation. This is th Boulder Valley School District, by the way.

Thanks again, and I hope this thread is useful to others..

Grinity, I love the family motto. I will be stealing it. Thanks, Kathleen

Well done, Kathleen!
So was this past bullying done at this school or at other schools?
If it was at this school, then I would bring up that concern with the Principle and see if she is more willing to allow the subject accelerations.

Personally, I think she is doing you a favor by 'playing hardball' and only offering the limited choice of 'be a normal 5th grader' or 'be an unhappy 4th grader and make the best of it.' Is he really safe from bullying if he's only attending 5th grade for half his subjects? I doubt it. IF the bullying is a problem - then solve it!!!

If I were the Principle, and I heard a parent saying: 'I agree he should be in 5th grade, but he's afraid of your students.' it would inspire me to pay attention and think outside the box.

Then I would brainstorm how to solve the bullying problem:
1) Creating an anti-bullying program at the school so that every child of every agegroup starts getting the message that it's the audience that creates an atmousphere where bullying happens, and it's up to the audience-members to speak up and stop unfair treatment of classmates.
2) Set up a team-taught combined 4th-5th grade classroom with some of DS's favorite friends so that the whole group will be together and his current friends can stand up the whatever 5th graders are causing a problem, and DS can have his full skip to 5th grade without lossing his social supports.
3) Get social skills training of DS, at school, afterschool or through Martial Arts so that DS grows in his self confidence and skills to handle difficult social challenges.

And you may be right - DS might well be projecting his discomfort with being different onto others. If he doesn't accept himself for who he is, how is he to expect others to accept him. If this is true, the skip will be likely to help DS accept himself 'differences and all.'

Not to mention that DS might be very panicy about the idea of actually having to 'work' in order to 'feel smart' in school. If this is running then you have all the more reason to skip him.

In the end, I think you can get a lot of milage out of telling DS, 'this is where the Principle believes you need to be. It might mean that you need to grow in ways that you don't believe you can grow right now, but I believe that you can grow in those ways, and I have faith that you will.'

Because:

Yup - that's the point of a Motto - it gets repeated over and over and becomes the punchline of every story!

An alternative path is to review the Motto, and then review the facts '4th grade doesn't provide a challenging situation for you' and ask DS to come up with some brainstorms for alternatives. At our house this sometimes means that I am impressed and give DS a few months to try, or that DS realizes that his ideas are a lot more work than he wants to do.

Love and More Love,
Grinity

That's a tough decision. Good luck!

My DD is against the idea of a full skip mainly because of her size (she's already frustrated with being the smallest kid in her class) and because she doesn't want to be at a different school than her best friend, who is close enough to her LOG to "get" her. So, we're continuing to pursue subject acceleration, even if much of it ends up taking place at home.

Love it! I may be taping that to the inside of my younger DD's backpack.

Grinity I LOVE that motto and will steal it too if that's okay with you? Even at age 4 DS4 is anti challenges either side of his comfort zone. drives me nuts as I try and encourage him to try new things without watching from the sidelines first and practicing in secret / in his head.

I have a lot of sympathy for the close LOG friend idea, so it seems like now isn't a good time for a skip.

(The size argument alone wouldn't have convinsed me, BTW)

Smiles,
Grinity

Yes Yes Madoosa and MWM! If you love it, then it's was already your in the first place - I'm just reminding you of what you already know!!! You can't steal what you already own.

Love and more Love,
Grinity

I agree, we probably would have proceeded if DD's only objection was size. The best friend thing was a huge part of it, and other non-academic issues like athletics also played a role.

Thanks for all the responses.

Well, the school is still pushing to move him ahead, but I really believe if they could teach above grade level without a skip he would be much better off. The truth is that the pace will still be too slow with a skip. I have since learned that the district can do some things for him if he doesn't skip that the principal never offered as an option.. I can even try homeschooling for part of the day.

I have told the school team what we would like and I suggested they talk with him. He has already been moved twice in a previous school (and expected to know the language fluently). He just needs some continuity, a cluster of like kids, and a much more flexible teacher.